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That said, proper 5e rules for ship to ship combat (and hopefully ship stats) is something that would be delicious for me to adapt to my gestating campaign world that I am telling people that I am building.

Edit: Unless they're just a reprinting of the Unearthed Arcana from a while back...

$5 says that's exactly what they're doing.

Good thinking, that'll cover the extra charge you'll need to pay to get the UA-reprint rules from this $50 book to show up in DnD Beyond.

I've got a bit of a conundrum for my curse of strahd game, the party's bard has been pretty definitely-evil for a while but justifying himself (coming up with reasons why he had to kill someone, eg: the bergermeister is crazy), and yesterday he murdered a guy just to steal his appearance with a class ability because he didnt like being covered in fur

Well, on *my* request I don't want this to be a pvp game, the paladin doesn't want that either, but what my character would do would be try to stop his character from being a blatant murderer without even trying to fig-leaf it with violence... but I can't...

I'm considering just using portent dice for the rest of the campaign to fuck him over, since he's in direct opposition to my character at this point (and basically full on neutral evil), either that or bite him and turn him into a wereraven, turning him lawful good, so he can no longer "its what my character would do"

I tried explaining to him that like, our little mans have to work together, and that's hard to do if he's just murdering people willy nilly because...like... no? And he said "I'm sorry me playing my character correctly is hurting your experience". ugh, I shouldnt have picked a good character. Curse of strahd is supposed to be a descent into darkness, even I've accidentally killed a town guard, but that's supposed to be ... not just "I feel like randomly murder hoboing out in the open, at the detriment of the party", with no trauma or reason for doing so

no pvp requires a couple things:

1) no pvp
2) players on the same page

your group skipped #2 and your solution is to break #1

you guys need to have a discussion about this as players, and if one of your players' attitude is fuck you, then maybe you need to remove that one player.

Or you could act like a Paladin and smite the mothefucker and tell him that you are just playing in character also. So there.

Wait, you're not the Paladin. Whatever, you get the idea.

His character is minmaxed out the ass, hes a half elf whispers bard with counterspell and 22 charisma and 70hp, im an aasimar wizard with 18 intelligence and 40hp, that's not really even a competition - I didn't design a character with player versus player in mind

Phew, im just going to have to handle it ingame through roleplay, I mostly just needed to vent.

I'm going to have to get the DM's permission because I plan on stealing the sun sword from him and giving it to the paladin. "its what my character would do" covers not wanting him to have a holy weapon against evil if he is evil, ill talk to the DM about it on the way to Garycon

In-character solutions are rarely a good idea for this sort of problem.

An out-of-character "You are being a dick. Stop being a dick or play with someone else" conversation is generally a much more effective option, and as a bonus it doesn't hold a whole session or more of your game hostage to dealing with their bullshit.

Also be aware that if you do try to resolve it by some in-game method, it is absolutely going to result in PvP combat whether you want it to or not. The sort of player you're having this problem with in the first place is also the sort that is immediately going to go "he cast suggestion on me/kicked me out of the party/stole my sword? I kill him. It's what my character would do!"

Or you could act like a Paladin and smite the mothefucker and tell him that you are just playing in character also. So there.

Wait, you're not the Paladin. Whatever, you get the idea.

His character is minmaxed out the ass, hes a half elf whispers bard with counterspell and 22 charisma and 70hp, im an aasimar wizard with 18 intelligence and 40hp, that's not really even a competition - I didn't design a character with player versus player in mind

Phew, im just going to have to handle it ingame through roleplay, I mostly just needed to vent.

I'm going to have to get the DM's permission because I plan on stealing the sun sword from him and giving it to the paladin. "its what my character would do" covers not wanting him to have a holy weapon against evil if he is evil, ill talk to the DM about it on the way to Garycon

So, my friends were (are?) upset that I hit them with lighting bolts after they messed with my gold.

I mean, sure I escalated but I felt with was deserved. Don't touch crow man's gold.

And on that note, playing a Kenku has been hard in a lot of ways. Fun in a lot of others. My biggest gripe is my party members seem to purposefully misinterpret me, which at time can be fun but other times it can get old fast. I tried to bring this up with the DM and his answer was "I told you it would be hard". Yeah, I know it would be hard, but I didn't expect to be undermined.

Or you could act like a Paladin and smite the mothefucker and tell him that you are just playing in character also. So there.

Wait, you're not the Paladin. Whatever, you get the idea.

His character is minmaxed out the ass, hes a half elf whispers bard with counterspell and 22 charisma and 70hp, im an aasimar wizard with 18 intelligence and 40hp, that's not really even a competition - I didn't design a character with player versus player in mind

Phew, im just going to have to handle it ingame through roleplay, I mostly just needed to vent.

I'm going to have to get the DM's permission because I plan on stealing the sun sword from him and giving it to the paladin. "its what my character would do" covers not wanting him to have a holy weapon against evil if he is evil, ill talk to the DM about it on the way to Garycon

As good as it would feel to smite a dick player, my suggestion was not a serious one.

Unplanned PvP fueled by player hate will lead only to a ruined campaign. And if you are otherwise enjoying this game, don't be that guy. Talk to your DM, have the DM talk to the others players and see if you can't sort this out ooc, lest the rest of the game suffer.

I -the player- know stuff about dnd monsters that my 19 year old folk hero from a small town doesn't know, whereas my friend knows fuck all about dnd monsters, but his character an adult half-elf monster hunter knows a lot about them. It is kind of funny to nudge my friend and go "maaaaybe your character knows something about the alignment and int score of ogres?"

I -the player- know stuff about dnd monsters that my 19 year old folk hero from a small town doesn't know, whereas my friend knows fuck all about dnd monsters, but his character an adult half-elf monster hunter knows a lot about them. It is kind of funny to nudge my friend and go "maaaaybe your character knows something about the alignment and int score of ogres?"

I don't think it would be out of line at all for you, the more experienced player, to say things at the table like, "Hey Billy, would your monster hunter know anything more about Ogres?" to prompt the other player to ask directly to the DM, or to prompt the DM to ask the Monster Hunter to make a survival check or something to feed the party information.

I -the player- know stuff about dnd monsters that my 19 year old folk hero from a small town doesn't know, whereas my friend knows fuck all about dnd monsters, but his character an adult half-elf monster hunter knows a lot about them. It is kind of funny to nudge my friend and go "maaaaybe your character knows something about the alignment and int score of ogres?"

I don't think it would be out of line at all for you, the more experienced player, to say things at the table like, "Hey Billy, would your monster hunter know anything more about Ogres?" to prompt the other player to ask directly to the DM, or to prompt the DM to ask the Monster Hunter to make a survival check or something to feed the party information.

This was one of my favorite tools as a GM to bring new players into the game. It was also a technique I used when an experienced player tried to over ride a newbie's thoughts with their experience.

With new players, I would interject - "Hey, your character studied magic their whole childhood - I bet they'd know something. Roll Arcana to see what you can recall off the top of your head. Or, if you guys want to take a minute, you can open your books in the dungeon to get extra info".

When experienced players would start talking about things they just knew about monsters, I'd usually chime in with a "I bet [new player playing a class combo that would know that thing] probably knows a bit about that". Then I'd pass a note to the new player giving info on whatever they were talking about, and let the new player narrate how their character knew the thing.

As a player, I try to alternate either showing new players how play, or with asking leading questions directly to their characters. I love learning about people's characters, and one of the best ways is to let them have the spot light for a bit and see what they come up with. The initial rush in TTRPGs is that dopamine hit of when you get to be the star, but the secret joy and thrill, for me, is to be the alley-oop set up man. Even better when nobody really even notices the pass.

@JustTee did you ever do improv? Because you seem like the type that would flourish in an environment like that. Someone explained it like this: you're not trying to be funny, you're trying to set up a situation where someone else gets to be funny. When everyone is in that mindset you end up in fantastic situations.

WRT: knowing something about monsters. Depends on the DM, I would say that some stuff you just know, no roll required. Every monster hunter worth their arrows would recognize all monsters native to the area they are from. Now if there's some tracks to identify then an investigation check can be in order or if they're observing a creature they've never seen before they could make a history or insight check to see if any of the features of the monster correlate with that of any monsters they do know. For example: the beast eyes remind you of those of a tiger or their roar sounds like that of a kraken.

One thing I really love is to tie a skill check to a different stat, like an INT-survival check instead of WIS, because someone studied survival techniques or a CHA-history check because the bard maybe remembers a song once that has a hint on what they're dealing with. I like that bit of flexibility, even though it is a bit more work for the DM to call out sensible checks.

In-character solutions are rarely a good idea for this sort of problem.

An out-of-character "You are being a dick. Stop being a dick or play with someone else" conversation is generally a much more effective option, and as a bonus it doesn't hold a whole session or more of your game hostage to dealing with their bullshit.

Also be aware that if you do try to resolve it by some in-game method, it is absolutely going to result in PvP combat whether you want it to or not. The sort of player you're having this problem with in the first place is also the sort that is immediately going to go "he cast suggestion on me/kicked me out of the party/stole my sword? I kill him. It's what my character would do!"

I had the out of game conversation and we simply have a disagreement about how to play the game, I can handle it in character since we HAVE to work together anyway (I'm going to hire the assassin Arugal to kill him as soon as Strahd is defeated, as payment for rescuing the daughter of the head Vistani guy)

it's not that big of a drama thing I mostly just needed to vent my frustrations... I'm not actually going to do anything dickish to him (hes retiring the character after COS anyway, so him getting assassinated is on the table)

Pretty good balance of types--Religion is probably least-useful while Nature likely covers the most, but it's not wildly out of line, and I think these are reasonably justified with each skill. History is typically about humanoid-ish / sapient creatures of the Material Plane, and constructs are typically built by such. I also might call for different checks depending on what sort of questions the player asks.

Why yes, this is loosely taken from 3e.

Me elsewhere:
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius

Also what's everyone's bets we don't actually get that artificer unearthed arcana article in february?

"We have a new book coming out soon, sorry."
"We had a week-long snowstorm which meant we couldn't do any work at our personal homes, sorry."
"We don't actually believe in consistent deadlines as promised to our consumer audience, sorry."

Taking a page from Chris Perkins, I'jin turned the entire party into children in the tomb of the nine gods. They each got a backpack with a change of clothes, a packed lunch, some non alcoholic tej, and a "get out of trouble" card, which they can redeem to undo a horrible event as a reaction (any even they see). Their hitpoints went into the tank.

All the enemies are kids too, they're running into tiny Tomb Guardians and the Beholder Belchazar whines at them through his eyestalks in the corridors that he hates that little rabbit, there's no such thing as a beholder child, he's just tiny and his proportions are wrong!

They ran into some Red Wiazards that insisted the party was responsible for this, demanding I'jin's horn. After a short but hilariously lethal battle because nobody has more than 30 hitpoints, they had subdued or killed all the thayans, depositing the still living ones in their portable hole (with full knowledge that if they're still in there when they undo this, those poor saps are stuck as bald kids with weird tattoos and need to take the slow way back to adulthood). The succubus that had infiltrated the party broke down and ratted out her bosses, not wanting to under any circumstance end up stuck as a child, revealing her deception and how to rescue the party's druid.

I'jin wants the druid because the druid is I'jins bondmate, and won't fix them until they do that. They just have to go through the maze of doom. They still have 2 "Get out of trouble" cards left, itll be fine

One of the most frequently missed rules for DMs is that a lot of the time you should be calling for stat/skill or stat/tool checks.

On more than one occasion I've called for a Strength (Medicine) check while running AL games - the usual response is shock that you can do that, followed by an eager dice roll as the character in question carries out their specific enhanced interrogation.

Strength (Intimidation) checks are also regularly called for - You're telling me that that 7'6" half-orc barbarian isn't intimidating because he's socially inept?

@JustTee did you ever do improv? Because you seem like the type that would flourish in an environment like that. Someone explained it like this: you're not trying to be funny, you're trying to set up a situation where someone else gets to be funny. When everyone is in that mindset you end up in fantastic situations.

WRT: knowing something about monsters. Depends on the DM, I would say that some stuff you just know, no roll required. Every monster hunter worth their arrows would recognize all monsters native to the area they are from. Now if there's some tracks to identify then an investigation check can be in order or if they're observing a creature they've never seen before they could make a history or insight check to see if any of the features of the monster correlate with that of any monsters they do know. For example: the beast eyes remind you of those of a tiger or their roar sounds like that of a kraken.

One thing I really love is to tie a skill check to a different stat, like an INT-survival check instead of WIS, because someone studied survival techniques or a CHA-history check because the bard maybe remembers a song once that has a hint on what they're dealing with. I like that bit of flexibility, even though it is a bit more work for the DM to call out sensible checks.

I haven't ever done improv, but I'm a bit obsessive about researching things I enjoy, so I've read a lot about how both to be a good player and to be a good GM. And I can definitely see the overlaps.

And yeah - I think an important part of GMing is learning that not everything needs to be rolled, and only roll when there are interesting consequences of failure. So yeah, your ranger, even in weird terrain, can probably identify a whole bunch based on the tracks they see, with no die roll required. I also like to do that for new players - either by giving them a note with stuff their character would just know, or if they have expressed discomfort with having too much spotlight, kind of summarizing what their character would know, and let them decide how much to share with the table.

One of the most frequently missed rules for DMs is that a lot of the time you should be calling for stat/skill or stat/tool checks.

On more than one occasion I've called for a Strength (Medicine) check while running AL games - the usual response is shock that you can do that, followed by an eager dice roll as the character in question carries out their specific enhanced interrogation.

Strength (Intimidation) checks are also regularly called for - You're telling me that that 7'6" half-orc barbarian isn't intimidating because he's socially inept?

A big problem I had with being able to do this was playing on a service like Roll 20. They bake in the things you can easily roll, and when you're playing with folk who don't have system mastery, you can cause all kinds of confusion. In person, with new players, I like to just give them some index cards as cheaters in addition to their character sheet. One says: "If you're good at it: [+2]" (or w/e the proficiency bonus is for that session). Then I have a card that says "Your Strengths:" with the bonuses for their good stats, and "Your Weaknesses" with the bonuses/negatives for their bad stats. This way, at the table, instead of saying "roll Strength: Athletics", I can say "make a check using your best good stat, and tell me why you're good at this if you want to add +2". It's a bit looser, but it starts to get them to think of how the system works, and why their character gets to add numbers to some things but not others.

Curse of Strahd game i am DMing finally made it to an Amber Sarcophagi room.

one immediately picked up come if cold at will power and made her cha save. Another picked up scry power and failed her save, so that will be fun. And a third player moments earlier was the first to touch the staff on the ground (he's a barbarian). That was the end if the session.

I've got a bit of a conundrum for my curse of strahd game, the party's bard has been pretty definitely-evil for a while but justifying himself (coming up with reasons why he had to kill someone, eg: the bergermeister is crazy), and yesterday he murdered a guy just to steal his appearance with a class ability because he didnt like being covered in fur

Well, on *my* request I don't want this to be a pvp game, the paladin doesn't want that either, but what my character would do would be try to stop his character from being a blatant murderer without even trying to fig-leaf it with violence... but I can't...

I'm considering just using portent dice for the rest of the campaign to fuck him over, since he's in direct opposition to my character at this point (and basically full on neutral evil), either that or bite him and turn him into a wereraven, turning him lawful good, so he can no longer "its what my character would do"

I tried explaining to him that like, our little mans have to work together, and that's hard to do if he's just murdering people willy nilly because...like... no? And he said "I'm sorry me playing my character correctly is hurting your experience". ugh, I shouldnt have picked a good character. Curse of strahd is supposed to be a descent into darkness, even I've accidentally killed a town guard, but that's supposed to be ... not just "I feel like randomly murder hoboing out in the open, at the detriment of the party", with no trauma or reason for doing so

The DM could have everybody this guy murders pointlessly come back as a revenant seeking revenge.

That's what I'm planning to do soon with my group's murder happy player: have the lich villain teleport her to a room where the revenants of everyone she's pointlessly killed are (which would be about a dozen or so).

One of the other players has revivify, so if he can make it to her after she's died she'll be fine, plus the revenants will be gone because they succeeded in their goal of killing her. That's providing he can find her and cast the spell within 10 rounds.

Actually, come to think of it, the character who knows revivify is an Oath of Vengeance paladin. If he interfered with the revenant's revenge would that be considered breaking his Oath?

The lich could be setting up a choice: interfere with the revenant's revenge and become an Oathbreaker paladin, or hold to your Oath and let the party member die (and possibly come back as a revenant hunting down the paladin).

Oathbreakers have a limited ability to control undead, but they also have this feature:

"Starting at 7th level you, as well any fiends and undead within 10 feet of you, gain a bonus to melee weapon damage rolls equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of +1)."

So if the paladin breaks his Oath and becomes an Oathbreaker he'll also power-up the many demons and undead the party is soon to face.

Haha, I really like this. This is working out a lot better than I expected, and this seems exactly like the kind of plan a lich would have!

Im lucky when i dominate my player characters or charm them i just leave them under player control and tell them "hey this is your new directive, you know how best to play your character to fulfill the directive, go". My players will totally switch to full "try your hardest to kill the party" mode when they get charmed or otherwise turned on the party and told to do so. It's pretty great.

Im lucky when i dominate my player characters or charm them i just leave them under player control and tell them "hey this is your new directive, you know how best to play your character to fulfill the directive, go". My players will totally switch to full "try your hardest to kill the party" mode when they get charmed or otherwise turned on the party and told to do so. It's pretty great.

That kind of sucks though, anyone who built a character for RP might as well just leave the table because the optimized superiority archer will kill them in one round

Like, my character has a whopping 45% chance of making the saving throw on the dark gifts, and on a fail you lose your character or just wait until the next encounter and cast hold person on the entire party so they all die

I mean they also don't do it in a way where they drop the clothy. Also most outright charms and dominates that would outright force player action get stopped by the dominated character takin a few whacks.

Also turning evil doesn't necessarily mean killing the party. It doesn't even really necessitates a shift in goals or priorities, just what you are willing to do to accomplish those goals.